I know what it is like to lay block and pour concrete in the blazing hot sun.
“Mark! Get up!” my dad urged in a hushed voice. 6 AM, a Monday morning in the summer of 2015. I put on an old pair of jeans and walked out of the warm, cozy atmosphere of my room and into the cold kitchen for breakfast. Dry cereal and CBS 5AM news with the occasional falling back into a deep sleep. “5AM news?”, you may ask. My parents did not like having to watch commercials and neither did I so they recorded the earlier showing.
Trinity Lutheran Church. The job was simple: build a wall with cutouts on one side to hang tiles. What did not make it simple was the fact the man who was in charge of the project used to be an engineer and even though the wall was not even attached to the building it, had to have more than enough rebar or “steel” in the footing and joints.
“Start unloading that stuff!” my dad yelled making a general motion toward the new flat bed truck my dad had recently purchased. Never very specific my dad, but I could figure out by “stuff” he meant the block and bags of cement or “spec mix” as he called it. I got an old blue wheelbarrow tainted with old concrete from past jobs out of the back of my dads big white pickup truck. The metal gates of the new truck squeaked as I lifted them up out of the pin holes they sat in.
1...2…3...LIFT! I thought to myself as one by one I unloaded the oversized cinder blocks from the truck. Now the wheelbarrow was once more full with what I could barely push up the small hill to the half built wall. “I unloaded those block like you said” I panted.
“Make some mortar.” my dad said without looking up from what he was doing. Mortar is the half water half powder compound that is used to joint the block together. Making mortar was a pretty easy task besides the first step which was lifting the bag of spec mix that weighed nearly as much as me. After getting the bag in the wheelbarrow it was just add water and mix it back and forth with a hoe until it was not to watery but not too solid either.
One of the more skills need to be successful at laying block and pouring concrete is steady hands. After making the mortar it needed to be moved from the wheelbarrow to “mudboards” or little tables in which my dad and his employee scooped the mortar onto their trowels to cake onto the block and then set them into place. Both me and the blocklayers need steady hands because getting the mortar from the wheelbarrow to the mudboards is harder than it looks. You can’t just dump a shovelfull of mortar onto the boards or it will splatter everywhere and you might miss the board entirely if you just threw like you would with dirt. The trick to getting mortar from the wheelbarrow to the board as efficiently as possible is by getting a medium amount of mortar but not too much or too little then slowly moving the shovel without making any sudden movements and turning the shovel as you set it on the board letting the mortar slide off the shovel.
In conclusion being an employee for a masonry contractor may not sound exciting but after the job is done there is a feeling of accomplishment and being content with yourself, not to mention the exhausting workout you get out of completing a job.
“Mark! Get up!” my dad urged in a hushed voice. 6 AM, a Monday morning in the summer of 2015. I put on an old pair of jeans and walked out of the warm, cozy atmosphere of my room and into the cold kitchen for breakfast. Dry cereal and CBS 5AM news with the occasional falling back into a deep sleep. “5AM news?”, you may ask. My parents did not like having to watch commercials and neither did I so they recorded the earlier showing.
Trinity Lutheran Church. The job was simple: build a wall with cutouts on one side to hang tiles. What did not make it simple was the fact the man who was in charge of the project used to be an engineer and even though the wall was not even attached to the building it, had to have more than enough rebar or “steel” in the footing and joints.
“Start unloading that stuff!” my dad yelled making a general motion toward the new flat bed truck my dad had recently purchased. Never very specific my dad, but I could figure out by “stuff” he meant the block and bags of cement or “spec mix” as he called it. I got an old blue wheelbarrow tainted with old concrete from past jobs out of the back of my dads big white pickup truck. The metal gates of the new truck squeaked as I lifted them up out of the pin holes they sat in.
1...2…3...LIFT! I thought to myself as one by one I unloaded the oversized cinder blocks from the truck. Now the wheelbarrow was once more full with what I could barely push up the small hill to the half built wall. “I unloaded those block like you said” I panted.
“Make some mortar.” my dad said without looking up from what he was doing. Mortar is the half water half powder compound that is used to joint the block together. Making mortar was a pretty easy task besides the first step which was lifting the bag of spec mix that weighed nearly as much as me. After getting the bag in the wheelbarrow it was just add water and mix it back and forth with a hoe until it was not to watery but not too solid either.
One of the more skills need to be successful at laying block and pouring concrete is steady hands. After making the mortar it needed to be moved from the wheelbarrow to “mudboards” or little tables in which my dad and his employee scooped the mortar onto their trowels to cake onto the block and then set them into place. Both me and the blocklayers need steady hands because getting the mortar from the wheelbarrow to the mudboards is harder than it looks. You can’t just dump a shovelfull of mortar onto the boards or it will splatter everywhere and you might miss the board entirely if you just threw like you would with dirt. The trick to getting mortar from the wheelbarrow to the board as efficiently as possible is by getting a medium amount of mortar but not too much or too little then slowly moving the shovel without making any sudden movements and turning the shovel as you set it on the board letting the mortar slide off the shovel.
In conclusion being an employee for a masonry contractor may not sound exciting but after the job is done there is a feeling of accomplishment and being content with yourself, not to mention the exhausting workout you get out of completing a job.